Liveblog: Apple’s Q1 2017 earnings call

Apple will host its earnings call for the
first quarter of its fiscal 2017 this afternoon at 5pm Eastern (10pm
UK), and we'll be liveblogging the call and the analyst Q&A session
to give you all the information along with our insights and charts.

This quarter's results are expected to be a
return to year-over-year growth after a disappointing 2016 in which
Apple's year-over-year earnings fell for the first time since 2001.
Apple's guidance from last quarter predicted that the company would make
between $76 and $78 billion this quarter with profit margins between 38
and 38.5 percent. It made $74.6 billion in revenue in Q1 of 2016.

Expect services revenue, a consistent bright
spot in Apple's 2016 earnings reports, to continue climbing. The Mac's
slow decline throughout 2016 could be slowed or reversed by the
introduction of the new MacBook Pros in October. This is the first full
quarter of availability for the new Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watches,
which could offset decline in the company's nebulous "Other Products"
category. And the iPad, which has been in decline since Q2 of 2014,
showed signs of bottoming out in the last couple quarters of 2016. The
major wildcard will be iPhone 7 sales—the iPhone is nearly two-thirds of
Apple's revenue, so slower sales of the iPhone 6S throughout 2016 were
primarily responsible for the company's decline last year.

Finally, we can probably expect the analyst
Q&A after the main report to be dominated by questions about the new
presidential administration, which has proposed and begun implementing several immigration and international trade policies that could affect Apple's business.